Does the Internet Make You Dumber?

The Roman philosopher Seneca may have put it best 2,000 years ago: "To be everywhere is to be nowhere." Today, the Internet grants us easy access to unprecedented amounts of information. But a growing body of scientific evidence suggests that the Net, with its constant distractions and interruptions, is also turning us into scattered and superficial thinkers.

The picture emerging from the research is deeply troubling, at least to anyone who values the depth, rather than just the velocity, of human thought. People who read text studded with links, the studies show, comprehend less than those who read traditional linear text. People who watch busy multimedia presentations remember less than those who take in information in a more sedate and focused manner. People who are continually distracted by emails, alerts and other messages understand less than those who are able to concentrate. And people who juggle many tasks are less creative and less productive than those who do one thing at a time.

ENLARGE

Mick Coulas

The common thread in these disabilities is the division of attention. The richness of our thoughts, our memories and even our personalities hinges on our ability to focus the mind and sustain concentration. Only when we pay deep attention to a new piece of information are we able to associate it "meaningfully and systematically with knowledge already well established in memory," writes the Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel. Such associations are essential to mastering complex concepts.

When we're constantly distracted and interrupted, as we tend to be online, our brains are unable to forge the strong and expansive neural connections that give depth and distinctiveness to our thinking. We become mere signal-processing units, quickly shepherding disjointed bits of information into and then out of short-term memory.

In an article published in Science last year, Patricia Greenfield, a leading developmental psychologist, reviewed dozens of studies on how different media technologies influence our cognitive abilities. Some of the studies indicated that certain computer tasks, like playing video games, can enhance "visual literacy skills," increasing the speed at which people can shift their focus among icons and other images on screens. Other studies, however, found that such rapid shifts in focus, even if performed adeptly, result in less rigorous and "more automatic" thinking.

56 Seconds

Average time an American spends looking at a Web page.

Source: Nielsen

In one experiment conducted at Cornell University, for example, half a class of students was allowed to use Internet-connected laptops during a lecture, while the other had to keep their computers shut. Those who browsed the Web performed much worse on a subsequent test of how well they retained the lecture's content. While it's hardly surprising that Web surfing would distract students, it should be a note of caution to schools that are wiring their classrooms in hopes of improving learning.

Ms. Greenfield concluded that "every medium develops some cognitive skills at the expense of others." Our growing use of screen-based media, she said, has strengthened visual-spatial intelligence, which can improve the ability to do jobs that involve keeping track of lots of simultaneous signals, like air traffic control. But that has been accompanied by "new weaknesses in higher-order cognitive processes," including "abstract vocabulary, mindfulness, reflection, inductive problem solving, critical thinking, and imagination." We're becoming, in a word, shallower.

In another experiment, recently conducted at Stanford University's Communication Between Humans and Interactive Media Lab, a team of researchers gave various cognitive tests to 49 people who do a lot of media multitasking and 52 people who multitask much less frequently. The heavy multitaskers performed poorly on all the tests. They were more easily distracted, had less control over their attention, and were much less able to distinguish important information from trivia.

The researchers were surprised by the results. They had expected that the intensive multitaskers would have gained some unique mental advantages from all their on-screen juggling. But that wasn't the case. In fact, the heavy multitaskers weren't even good at multitasking. They were considerably less adept at switching between tasks than the more infrequent multitaskers. "Everything distracts them," observed Clifford Nass, the professor who heads the Stanford lab.

Does the Internet Make You Smarter?

It would be one thing if the ill effects went away as soon as we turned off our computers and cellphones. But they don't. The cellular structure of the human brain, scientists have discovered, adapts readily to the tools we use, including those for finding, storing and sharing information. By changing our habits of mind, each new technology strengthens certain neural pathways and weakens others. The cellular alterations continue to shape the way we think even when we're not using the technology.

The pioneering neuroscientist Michael Merzenich believes our brains are being "massively remodeled" by our ever-intensifying use of the Web and related media. In the 1970s and 1980s, Mr. Merzenich, now a professor emeritus at the University of California in San Francisco, conducted a famous series of experiments on primate brains that revealed how extensively and quickly neural circuits change in response to experience. When, for example, Mr. Merzenich rearranged the nerves in a monkey's hand, the nerve cells in the animal's sensory cortex quickly reorganized themselves to create a new "mental map" of the hand. In a conversation late last year, he said that he was profoundly worried about the cognitive consequences of the constant distractions and interruptions the Internet bombards us with. The long-term effect on the quality of our intellectual lives, he said, could be "deadly."

What we seem to be sacrificing in all our surfing and searching is our capacity to engage in the quieter, attentive modes of thought that underpin contemplation, reflection and introspection. The Web never encourages us to slow down. It keeps us in a state of perpetual mental locomotion.

It is revealing, and distressing, to compare the cognitive effects of the Internet with those of an earlier information technology, the printed book. Whereas the Internet scatters our attention, the book focuses it. Unlike the screen, the page promotes contemplativeness.

Reading a long sequence of pages helps us develop a rare kind of mental discipline. The innate bias of the human brain, after all, is to be distracted. Our predisposition is to be aware of as much of what's going on around us as possible. Our fast-paced, reflexive shifts in focus were once crucial to our survival. They reduced the odds that a predator would take us by surprise or that we'd overlook a nearby source of food.

To read a book is to practice an unnatural process of thought. It requires us to place ourselves at what T. S. Eliot, in his poem "Four Quartets," called "the still point of the turning world." We have to forge or strengthen the neural links needed to counter our instinctive distractedness, thereby gaining greater control over our attention and our mind.

It is this control, this mental discipline, that we are at risk of losing as we spend ever more time scanning and skimming online. If the slow progression of words across printed pages damped our craving to be inundated by mental stimulation, the Internet indulges it. It returns us to our native state of distractedness, while presenting us with far more distractions than our ancestors ever had to contend with.

—Nicholas Carr is the author, most recently, of "The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains."

I'm not sure how much evidence there is to back the claims made by the author, but it seems that ever since I began using the Internet heavily, I have found it difficult to read through an entire article, let alone process it and reflect upon it. Right at this moment I'm tempted to open a new tab, browse through Steam to check sales, or close Chrome to give myself the feeling of "starting over" on the Internet. This article has given me insight on this issue that I never fully understood until now.

Critics from Martin Luther to Edgar Allen Poe complained about the deluge of information resulting from the printed word. Though that deluge served them well. I would suggest to Mr. Carr that he rethink his hypothesis in light of the fact that the ability to research subjects quickly has not impeded the development of the human species, invention, or critical thought. Would we have begun mastering the ability to create a synthetic Genome without the depth and breadth of knowledge we have available via this Unholy Internet that is supposed to keep us from thinking critically? I think not. What Mr. Carr calls distraction, many of us call an opportunity to expand our knowledge.

This is no "state of distractedness" but the chance for more intense, varied concentration. The rapidity of study and expansion of knowledge available to conduct research has taken a ponderous, plodding behemoth and turned it into the swift owl of knowledge and wisdom. All we need do is use it, apply it, and continue thinking........

Many hide their abilities to understand quickly and come to correct conclusions or develop unique theories for fear of being called "distracted" or a "Multi-tasker". With the advent of the Internet, many of us can now spread our wings of thought and fly with the possibilities rather than brood about Atlantean paradises being destroyed that never existed.

The Internet is distributing knowledge and ideas as did the first printed words. The rapidity is daunting to some, as it was to those in centuries past who saw the threat of the written word. Humanity has evolved through the ages and has done so at a quickening pace throughout history. Though Mr. Carr and others may bemoan the Internet as a devolution, I ask them to look at history and what it has shown us. Embrace the ability to gain knowledge and spread the flame of new ideas and ways of thinking.

From the poetry of Enheduanna to the psalms of those who tweet, the Internet is just another link in the advancement, not decay, of the human mind and spirit.

It's not that internet technology is making us smarter or dumber. Or, you could say it's making us both. However, if the question were posed is it making us shallower, I believe the response would be a resounding "yes." The process and speed by which we're ingesting information is what's hurting us. We're approaching information consumption like it's a buffet on the run, instead of a single, slow cooked dish. Instead of tasting the depth of flavors in a single creation, we're going for the psychedelic experience of multitudes of flavors bombarding our senses all at once. We're taking it all in, just not in detail or with depth. After hours on the internet, I eventually close the lid on my wireless notebook (but not for long) and walk away with my mind once again feeling like I've been web-washed, a far less rewarding feeling than when I finish a book.

Thought is baked into the discourse by the distribution of news through many sources... The need for understanding is important, but more important is the need for knowing. Obviously, before you can understand anything, you must know something. There is a limit to the utility of thought in understanding events as opposed to concepts. As an underlying protocol for action, there is less utility in thought when relating to events, particularly in real-time scenarios, which is the nature of modern news reporting.

What I think you and your doctor friend miss entirely, is that intellectual depth has little application in 99% of the situations that people find themselves in. The most important part of understanding is reaching a critical mass that pushes a person to act or form an opinion. It's been shown many times that when we approach a complex problem, our instincts are pure...

On another note, have you ever watched a bird at a feeder? It never stops observing. We do the same things when we are alone in the dark, we process information nonstop. We were alone in the dark for millions of years.

At greatest risk are those who are already shallow-minded and impatient with any part of reality that cramps their style. This has bad implications for things like confusing climate with weather, which Carly Fiorina did in a recent campaign ad (trying to appease the usual half-wits).

The Internet allows AGW deniers to quickly find a city with cooler than average weather and proclaim that it mirrors the entire globe. Just ignore all the melting polar and glacial ice and make that trade by noon. Many who do this are right-wing WSJ readers who can't let science interfere with their all-important financial agendas. If someone spends all day reading business articles, they forget that nature allows the economy to exist in the first place, and its health can't be trivialized.

Before the Internet, this was analogous to people who never took college science courses, and were easily swayed by the rants of talk show hosts. That's still going on, of course. And now, they can click away to some denial website when a science piece offends their egos. Selective learning is rarely a good thing. We have too many people zoning in on business and finance who have no real idea how nature (the source of life itself) really works.

If the Internet is contributing to the dumbing-down of America on critical science issues, it needs to be strongly countered. When a science article offends the Chosen Ones (who "can't" be causing global warming), they can just click over to AnswersInGenesis and let their minds go numb with denial. This is not progress.

I think this is a great article...and as someone who greatly values intelligence and an ability to actually get productive work done, I wish more people would take these sorts of things to me.

The rewards are huge. I got through college effortlessly, in a difficult major, with a 3.7 GPA. I never studied for exams. How? I did my reading when it was assigned, and I always went to class, and I always paid attention. That's all you really need to do. The sad thing is, almost no one does it.

Same goes in most workplaces. I've often been the most productive worker. Why? All you really need to do is pay attention.

The problem I think is that the web is so far unable to present the calmness of a page. With lots of links, blinkind ads and flash video along articles it is hard to concentrate on the actual text you're reading. At least the website of The Times (London) is trying to calm it down a bit - as I think the WSJonline makes a good job in these efforts.Apart from that - it is hardly possible to read long articles online due to the quality of the screen of the PDAs, netbooks, notebooks, tablets... I only found e-ink to be useful for reading books or papers.I really fear we are heading towards an isolated society where everyone is just looking at their electronic devices, consume stupid 60 seconds movies of cats laughing and losing a lot of culture in the end.

It almost seems too silly a question to pose. It is like asking does reading books and getting further educated make you smarter or dumber. Anyone who spend time on the net is far smarter than they were before. Their interests and depth of knowledge have grown rapidly. Their awareness of the world is vaster. Their sense of their place in the world greater and with a sense of perspective that few people could have before. One's interests drive this new mental fertilizer. You hook onto the tiniest fleck of information and with a few keystrokes you drive deeper and deeper, acquiring a richness of knowledge unobtainable before. TV becomes banal, the net a gold mine to be endlessly explored, any time, any place. It feeds the minds in ways no other media/medium has ever done. We have access to knowledge about people, places, events, every element of our world. We can locate long lost relatives and classmates as easy as we can find no-longer-made replacement-parts for our 27 year old oil burner. We can mail a stranger across the world and say "hi" or download music, movies and videos about anything in moments. We can read about an earthquake in China or a Cajun recipe for crab in seconds. We can shop for an old book - that we could never have found in momths of physical searching - and find 20 copies with conditions described in seconds. Without frustration we can find the lowest priced anything and order it in one click without wasting time or gas. We can become far more expert investing, buying homes or CDs, finding dates or understanding our ailments. We communicate anywhere in the world in seconds. We save tremendous sums we previously spent using endless intermediaries. We have never been richer or more personally powerful.

This is a another version of Marshall McLuhan's "Medium is the message." From Wikipedia:

"McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (written in 1961, first published in Canada by University of Toronto Press in 1962) is a pioneering study in the fields of oral culture, print culture, cultural studies, and media ecology.

Throughout the book, McLuhan takes pains to reveal how communication technology (alphabetic writing, the printing press, and the electronic media) affects cognitive organization, which in turn has profound ramifications for social organization:

...[I]f a new technology extends one or more of our senses outside us into the social world, then new ratios among all of our senses will occur in that particular culture. It is comparable to what happens when a new note is added to a melody. And when the sense ratios alter in any culture then what had appeared lucid before may suddenly become opaque, and what had been vague or opaque will become translucent."

More to the point (from Wikipedia again):

McLuhan's most widely known work, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), is a pioneering study in media theory. In it McLuhan proposed that media themselves, not the content they carry, should be the focus of study—popularly quoted as "the medium is the message". McLuhan's insight was that a medium affects the society in which it plays a role not by the content delivered over the medium, but by the characteristics of the medium itself. McLuhan pointed to the light bulb as a clear demonstration of this concept. A light bulb does not have content in the way that a newspaper has articles or a television has programs, yet it is a medium that has a social effect; that is, a light bulb enables people to create spaces during nighttime that would otherwise be enveloped by darkness. He describes the light bulb as a medium without any content. McLuhan states that "a light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence."[41] More controversially, he postulated that content had little effect on society—in other words, it did not matter if television broadcasts children's shows or violent programming, to illustrate one example—the effect of television on society would be identical. He noted that all media have characteristics that engage the viewer in different ways; for instance, a passage in a book could be reread at will, but a movie had to be screened again in its entirety to study any individual part of it.The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects (1967)

This book, published in 1967, was McLuhan's best seller,[45] "eventually selling nearly a million copies worldwide."[46] Initiated by Quentin Fiore,[47] McLuhan adopted the term "massage" to denote the effect each medium has on the human sensorium, taking inventory of the "effects" of numerous media in terms of how they "massage" the sensorium.[48]

Fiore, at the time a prominent graphic designer and communications consultant, set about composing the visual illustration of these effects which were compiled by Jerome Agel. Near the beginning of the book, Fiore adopted a pattern in which an image demonstrating a media effect was presented with a textual synopsis on the facing page. The reader experiences a repeated shifting of analytic registers—from "reading" typographic print to "scanning" photographic facsimiles—reinforcing McLuhan's overarching argument in this book: namely, that each medium produces a different "massage" or "effect" on the human sensorium.

In The Medium is the Massage, McLuhan also rehashed the argument—which first appeared in the Prologue to 1962's The Gutenberg Galaxy—that media are "extensions" of our human senses, bodies and minds.

Finally, McLuhan described key points of change in how man has viewed the world and how these views were changed by the adoption of new media. "The technique of invention was the discovery of the nineteenth [century]", brought on by the adoption of fixed points of view and perspective by typography, while "[t]he technique of the suspended judgment is the discovery of the twentieth century", brought on by the bard abilities of radio, movies and television.[49]

An audio recording version of McLuhan's famous work was made by Columbia Records. The recording consists of a pastiche of statements made by McLuhan interrupted by other speakers, including people speaking in various phonations and falsettos, discordant sounds and 1960s incidental music in what could be considered a deliberate attempt to translate the disconnected images seen on TV into an audio format, resulting in the prevention of a connected stream of conscious thought. Various audio recording techniques and statements are used to illustrate the relationship between spoken, literary speech and the characteristics of electronic audio media. McLuhan biographer Philip Marchand called the recording "the 1967 equivalent of a McLuhan video."[50]

"I wouldn't be seen dead with a living work of art." - 'Old man' speaking "Drop this jiggery-pokery and talk straight turkey." - 'Middle aged man' speaking

Excellent article. I am definitely guilty of the "internet multitasking". I do think that we will be alright as long as we find a balance between this multitasking and traditional activities like reading or live conversation. I try to talk over the phone rather than text, and I try to use discussion boards like these so I don't just read an article and move on to the next one. Also, when I go to any lecture, class, or anything of the sort I turn my phone off. One of my major pet peeves in college was seeing people using their phone during class. What is the point of going to class, a speech, lecture, discussion, or even a ball game if someone is going to have their phone out the whole time?

I earned the Getty Oil Company shareholders 4 Billion Bucks On the Reserve acquisition; the way they treat me -- it really sucks!As the Getty inheritors bask in glee;All I asked for was that they look after me.Four billion dollars they earned on Reserve My fee I surely deserve.It turns out J.P. Getty may have been a Nazi;His family even goes back to Germany.With Hitler, Goring & Goebbels he did stand;While trying to undermine the American land!For paintings & artifacts he did receiveWith his oil he was able to deceive!Hoover & the FBI & Roosevelt they knew That J.P. Getty & espionage he drew!Many a young lad and Jew did dieAs planes dropped bombs from the sky.For years while Getty sat in BerlinHe may have committed many a sin.The ashes and smoke from the chimneys it rose While old man Getty sat cozy; he chose.With artwork held tightly under his armStill dripping in blood -- as the real owner met harm.Into the ovens & on meat-hooks, bullets between the eyes Listen very carefully you can still hear their cries!While the Gettys sit in England; at their estate at WormsleyAnd Gordon sings in San Francisco With his 727 in tow.The Getty museum sits atop Malibu While the corpses of World War 2 scream -- J.P. Getty -- We know you!

The impact of the mobile Internet is actually the bigger issue. By the end of 2010, five BILLION people will use mobile phones. Of these, one billion people, mostly in Africa and Southeast Asia, will access the mobile Web never having seen the Internet on a computer.

While it's true that information is not knowledge, you can't have one without the other. And the mobile phone, unlike any other communication channel in human history, will become the dominant information device of this century.

This "Internet makes us smarter/dumber" pair of articles are setup as a debate but are arguing different points. Charis Tsevis is arguing the impact of a new medium on the quality of information. Nick Carr is arguing the impact of a new medium on cognitive skills.

I give talks on innovation to universities and corporations. Occasionally, audience members mention they enjoyed a particular presentation but are not exactly sure why. The answer is usually that the talks are not shallow and follow 12 years of difficult, expensive primary research.

One thing I have learned is that information sources must be scrupulously verified. I am confident occasional inaccuracies still exist in the talks because primary research using original authentic references from a century ago is not always possible. However, the Google Books Project has proven a surprisingly excellent research resource, sometimes from 120 year old encyclopedias scanned at the University of Michigan.

The internet is no substitute for thinking for yourself? I'm shocked, shocked! To your point about those who confuse climate with weather: I've seen as many supporters of the hypothesis of AGW (human-caused global warming) reference weather patterns in support of their argument as climate change skeptics, so the shallow thinking goes both ways. The great Gore himself is guilty of this mode of flawed reasoning.

I have no doubt that the climate is changing constantly (because today's temperatures will range between 58 F and 76 F in New York, for example), although the argument that it is human-caused is weaker. And even if you accept human causation for purposes of argument, my climate scientist friends tell me that computer modeling doesn't predict well with respect to a planet whose surface is 80% fluid. There's a huge amount of hubris in the entire AGW line of argument.

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.